


tea and good company

by unicyclehippo



Series: Critical Shorts [6]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, light beau/yasha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 08:47:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21716293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicyclehippo/pseuds/unicyclehippo
Summary: prompt request: "What do you mean by leaving?"or, yasha is back and it's weird and scary and awful. the others walk on knife's edge and yasha is sick of hurting people. hurting them. to be without her is being in better company than if she were to stay; leaving only hurts her. right?
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Series: Critical Shorts [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824253
Comments: 2
Kudos: 122





	tea and good company

'What do you mean by leaving?'

It’s actually pretty obvious what she means by leaving, given the pack slung up on her shoulder and the way she won’t meet Beau’s eyes, but Beau still needs to _hear_ it, dammit. She takes the last steps down from the second landing, slowly, purposefully. Hopes Yasha is less likely to spook if she does.

It works, or Yasha gives up.

The chimes do their thing and chime delicately as the door closes.

‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ Yasha says, regretful.

‘Don’t think so highly of yourself,’ Beau shoots back. Her friend winces and Beau bites at her tongue until it hurts. ‘What I _mean_,’ she says, with significantly less acid in her voice, ‘is I was already awake.’

‘Bad dreams?’

Beau rolls her eyes. ‘Are you really gonna offer me night time therapy session with one foot out the door?’

‘My advice will be bad whether we are - are seated or standing,’ Yasha jokes, and she finally looks up from the floor to smile. It’s not a big smile, or particularly bright, but it does seem to be a real one, able to pack a whole lot of fondness into it. ‘I - will sit with you,’ she offers, and Beau can hear what she isn’t saying: _I __won’t leave._

Not tonight, anyway.

Yasha takes one and then another careful step toward the stairs, toward Beau. ‘I will get some tea.’ When Beau pulls an exaggerated face of distaste, she earns a second smile. ‘It's good. I grew it m—I planted it,’ she corrects, and the weight of her attention fades as her eyes glaze over, a tiny frown buried between dark brows as those memories of her absence rise from where she had laid them fitfully to rest.

Beau reaches up, pats Yasha on the shoulder both to pull her back to the here and now and as a gesture of camaraderie she realises now has been missing. When was the last time someone had touched Yasha? When was the last time they had really spoken? ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

Yasha nods. Disappears past her up the stairs.

It does occur to Beau that Yasha could easily jump out the window, or from her balcony. It occurred to her before Yasha had gone up the stairs, even, but she forces herself not to check on the other woman: friendship, _family_, requires faith. That’s what Cad has been teaching them since he joined and Beau respects—loves—that weird man too much to throw his lesson out the window the first chance she gets. _H__ave faith_, she thinks to herself, ignoring the way her gut twists and turns like angry eels. She sets the kettle into the low fire and steps back, hoists herself up onto the counter top to watch the pot. _H__ave faith. Have_—

‘Milk?’

‘No. We have honey, though,’ Beau tells Yasha, and is glad to hear that she just sounds a little tired when she says it, that her profound relief doesn't bleed through.

The woman steps out from the shadowed door like—well—like an avenging angel. It’s always remarkable to see her like this: the chiselled features, the serene mask covering the tumult of the storm. She’s always been gorgeous but there is something about night, about the ink darkness of constant midnight here in Rosohna, that sharpens her, sets the planes of her face and muscles in stark contrast. When she steps forward and pours a little of the leaves into the water, and stands still there, lit up by the firelight, Beau thinks of those kneeling statues and the orange firelight of the stove has weight, drenching her cheekbones like blood pouring from staring eyes and—

‘It’s here somewhere.’ Her too-loud words shatter the still, and Beau moves to busy herself, opens and closes as many of the cupboards as she can. Finally, she lands on the glass jar, golden honey still nearly to the rim. ‘Found it. I love this stuff.’

Yasha cocks her head to the side. Her eyes track Beau across the kitchen, watch her carefully as she doles two spoons into one mug.

‘Honey?’

‘Please.’ She spoons a little into Yasha’s mug as well. ‘I would not have guessed. You have a sweet tooth.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Beau shrugs. Returns the jar to its spot, she pops the spoon into her mouth. Licks it clean as they wait for the kettle to finish. ‘Cad keeps basically pouring tea down my throat—I think he thinks it’ll get me to sit still,’ she jokes, and hears Yasha laugh softly along with her. ‘Jester gave me some of her honey so I wouldn’t keep tasting dead people.’

‘Mm.’

When she deems it ready, though she is no master of the art like Caduceus seems to be, Yasha lifts the kettle out of the oven and pours. There is a kind of calming ritual to it, regardless of the simplicity of it. The night seems to gentle when it is awash with the fresh, grassy and almost floral scent, and the warm of it suffusing Beau’s hands as she holds her mug close is echoed, knowing that it is doing the same for Yasha seated across from her at the kitchen table.

‘So.’

‘So,’ Yasha echoes, and sighs a rumbling sigh like a distant storm. ‘You caught me.’

‘You wanted to be caught.’

There. Surprise, like a flash of lightning. ‘I—‘ Yasha blinks. ‘Perhaps,’ she admits. ‘I do not know.’

Beau nods. Sips. Hisses at the sting of still-boiling water against her lips and tongue. ‘Too hot,’ she warns. 'Careful.'

Yasha smiles—a third smile, a veritable bounty of them. ‘Thank you for the warning.’

They sit there, and blow on their tea, and think hard about what they want to say. The silence stretches on, eased into something not altogether agonizing by the entire business of drinking tea.

‘Thank you. For coming after me,’ Yasha says eventually, and she looks a little surprised by the words as they leave her. ‘You could have - let me leave.’

‘I could have. I thought about it.’ She meets Yasha’s eyes squarely and says, without reproach, but without gentling the words, ‘We have lost you too many times. I’m not letting it happen again.’

Yasha nods. Reaches out a hand carefully.

After a moments thought, Beau takes it in her own.

Yasha’s hand is warm with the heat of her tea, and they hold hands long enough for that to dim and fade and warm once more simply by the effort of holding one another’s hand.

‘There’s a lot of stuff to talk about, with everyone,’ Beau says eventually. Her thumb brushes along the length of Yasha's thumb, taps against her knuckle. ‘But so long as you know, we do _want_ you here, does that help?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Good. And—I mean this as no indictment or anything, because it’s something, frankly, that a lot of us need to work on, but if you need something you have to _tell_ us. We aren’t mind readers. Even Cad isn’t.’

Yasha crinkles her nose. A fourth smile.

Beau wonders if she shouldn’t be counting them, if that is strange; she wonders if she could somehow measure them, to see how they grow, how they might change.

‘He does seem like it sometimes, doesn’t he?’

‘Oh, a _hundred_ per cent, yeah.’ She squeezes Yasha’s hand. ‘Talking about what you need?’

‘I…will try.’

**Author's Note:**

> hi im unicyclehippo on tumblr as well, feel free to swing on by & say hi or send me a prompt x


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